Japan has traditionally been a something of a stronghold for Nintendo, but the latest 2019 sales data from Famitsu shows just how dominant the company has become in its homeland.

The stats – pulled together by Twitter user Oscar Lemaire – show that a staggering 76% of Japanese hardware sales last year were attributable to Switch. The console sold 4,493,903 units in Japan last year, which is a jump of 29% from 2018. The Switch's total lifetime sales in the region now stand at 11,383,449.

Of course, Nintendo has another console on the market in the form of the ageing 3DS, which sold 191,173 consoles in Japan last year. Despite Nintendo's claims that there's life in the 3DS yet, that's a worrying drop of 66%.

In comparison to Switch's success, Sony's PlayStation 4 was in second place with 1,196,153 units sold, a drop of 29% year-on-year. The PlayStation Vita sold 37.668 units – down down 79% from 2018 – while the Xbox One could only muster a pathetic 8,315 units sold – that's 0.1% of total console sales in Japan in 2019.

Oscar Lemaire also points out that, in the 20 years that Famitsu has tracked sales data, 2019 was Nintendo's most dominant year yet.

With Sony and Microsoft's next-gen consoles not arriving until the end of 2020, it would seem that Nintendo has the majority of the year all to itself.

Damien has over a decade of professional writing experience under his belt, as well as a repulsively hairy belly. Rumours that he turned down a role in The Hobbit to work on Nintendo Life are, to the best of our knowledge, completely and utterly unfounded.

The Switch is a solid system, however there’s no reason we can’t have messaging and voice chat capabilities. I’d also like to see Nintendo do more with the motion controls such as Wii sports! And last but not least I’d like to see a high-quality racing, shooter, and Madden come to the Nintendo Switch. Oh, add the web browser.

Well deserved, Nintendo laid the groundwork for the Switch with the Wii U and failed, but had the guts to stick with what they knew was a great idea, now they are reaping the rewards, the Switch brand should continue to evolve as the years go by.

Hopefully now all Japan publishers and devs are prioritizing Switch, especially with more revivals and rereleases like Trials of mana and Capcom beatemup collection, that 16 bit era audience is definitely there

This is not true. Switch is not selling better than Wii and DS combined. The twitterdude is only talking about consoles (exclusing handhelds, which Switch is also) and marketshare (the last one is logic... they launched a new portable Switch and ps4 is in decline/waiting for PS5).

The bigest thing why the switch is such a succes, is not only its concept, its also nintendo doing everything within their power to bring games to the switch.

Indiegames saved the system too within periods their was a slight drought, they embraced these small companies, even gave them the perfect platform with less restrictions then sony and microsoft to earn money.

Also games are dedicated to switch hardware, and developers see the switch as a challenge to produce for, and got rewarded earned also alot of monet and got praised.